Raijin
by Lord Mendasuit
Summary: Six times as hot as the surface of the sun and five times as loud as a jet engine. A lightning bolt is something far more powerful than we'd like to think. Unfortunately for Naruto, he got to experience all of that power first hand. Fortunately for Naruto, that which does not kill us, makes us stronger.
1. Storming Prelude

**Prologue: ****Storming Prelude  
**

* * *

There's something to be said about children. They are surprisingly intuitive and clever, when they wish to be. They can be crafty, they can be sneaky and they can be manipulative. Of course, they themselves are often unaware of this and likely doing the things they do entirely without realizing it. The innocence of youth means they are blissfully unaware of their cruelty.

However intelligent they can be, however, there is a simple, undeniable fact that can't be refuted.

They can't learn without someone, or something, to teach them. The most basic of things need to be taught, whether by example or by active effort, to them by someone else, and the only other way of learning is the hard way, through often humiliating and painful research. Instincts can only go so far.

Even particularly clever and crafty children cannot learn without being taught.

One particularly clever child, by the name of Uzumaki Naruto, is certainly no different in this regard. His greatest teacher is circumstance. Being orphaned shortly after his birth by the great king of all beasts, the Kyuubi no Kitsune, he didn't have the parents that would have taken the role.

Being the human container of said nine tailed beast meant that, unlike other children his age, he didn't have the help and aid of the orphanage workers that tried their hardest to be surrogate parental figures in the face of the orphans' lack of anything else. Even though they kept him fed, dressed and covered by the roof of the orphanage, they didn't offer him that which he wanted the most.

The starvation for affection bit at Naruto, and did so hard. He was starved for affection so much that he craved any and all kinds of attention. Even if the only attention they gave him was an angry scowl after he started a fight with someone else by taunting them until they paid attention to him. Being a seven year old boy and even then small for that age, his pastime of picking fights with older boys to get the matrons to look at him, to at least take the time to fuss over his wounds, had been more than a little painful.

But he didn't care about that. Not truly. Sure, he swore he'd beat them next time, swore he'd be a big badass ninja who would never be defeated, but that wasn't his objective in the least. Admittedly, he was improving in this endeavor, although it only caused the nurses who looked after him frustration… up until the point that it became routine and he was once again just a background prop.

So he'd stopped, as the results had waned to the point that it hardly earned him any recognition anymore.

The playground brawls taught him how to fight. The visits to the nice nurse taught him how to take care of his wounds, even if the poor girl had been replaced shortly after he started getting his ass kicked regularly she hadn't gone before leaving an impression. The man that replaced her had been much colder by comparison, but he still taught Naruto many things.

The small blond menace found that he liked learning. At least, he liked learning useful stuff. He liked learning to read because that meant he could read written directions, read notices, name tags and many, many other things that he hadn't noticed before.

Of course, he didn't like learning useless stuff in the least. That whole 'manners' thing that the eldest of the women whom he had seen working at the orphanage had taught the children, for example, Naruto found wholly unnecessary, pointless and boring in the extreme. Thus, he had ignored it entirely and gotten reprimanded for it many a time.

Life in the orphanage taught Naruto many things. It even taught him things that other children didn't learn until they were well away from their parents' supporting arms. Such as how to fend for oneself in what is colloquially referred to as 'the real world', the unforgiving world that preyed on the weak and revered the strong. Admittedly, Naruto's knowledge was incomplete and wrong in places, but the lessons that he had gotten to had been learned.

There is one thing; however, that life in an orphanage had not managed to teach Naruto. It was something rather simple that you could chalk up to common sense, when in truth is only so because of a bit of knowledge that, while commonplace to most, happened to be something that Naruto's specific circumstances precluded him from learning.

You see, he had no adults to teach him the finer things in life. Things that you don't really pay all that much attention to the first time, but would still heed because it was wisdom dispensed by an authority figure. Well, mostly. Things like 'Don't touch that or you will be burned' need to be taught, as they are not instincts.

Yes, you'd be surprised to learn that you need to teach a child not to put his hand in the fire, and even then, you'd find that the same child will stick their hand into the fire to make sure what you told them is the truth if you couldn't convince them the first time.

Things like that were the ones that Naruto had to learn by trial and error. He learned ice cream was cold when he picked up a popsicle that he'd found on the ground and stuck it in his mouth (he'd seen the girl who'd been eating it before). He learned not to shove things he found on the ground when doing so revealed he almost swallowed a beetle.

Despite what it might seem, common sense needs to be taught. You need to give the child a basic set of rules they can fall back to so they can discern whether or not a certain course of action is stupid or not.

They need to be told the difference between 'Safe' and 'Stupidly stupid' before they could learn it themselves.

Knowing this fact, it was no mystery why Uzumaki Naruto, age 7, didn't know better than going out to play in the rain… In the middle of a thunderstorm the likes of which came only once a decade, usually. Nobody had been there to tell him that he'd catch the mother of all diseases if he went out to play in the rain in what amounted to whatever rags he happened to be wearing at the time.

So he did.

Despite the cold water and the strong wind, Naruto went out to have fun on his own. And have fun, he did. Having the park all to himself made up for the harsh conditions, in his young mind. There was no one to glare at him, though there was no one to look at him whenever he did something particularly daring (usually, his doing stupid things that could end up with him hurt ended with at least a stern talking to, though he was sure to get one when he got back to the orphanage anyway). The thunder was a little scary, but Naruto wasn't a coward, so he still pushed on.

There was no one to stop him from exploring the taller trees. Usually, when he went to the park there'd be some adult who would pry him down from the tree and tell him not to climb up to high places since he could fall and get hurt. He should wait until he was bigger and more experienced so he wouldn't fall.

Not knowing the meaning of the word 'fear', Naruto had then decided that he'd climb to the very top of the largest tree he saw. It was made an even more daunting task by the rain making the bark slippery and the cold making Naruto's limbs much more sluggish than they already were (He was a little clumsy already, so this wasn't helping matters at all).

It took him nearly ten minutes to climb to the treetop of the largest tree he'd seen, and when he did, he grinned widely, looking happy despite the fact that he was trembling and shivering as he did. Looking around, he noticed he was higher than most buildings around the park. He was at least three stories up, from the looks of things, and he'd climbed here in the middle of the rain with strong winds and biting cold.

He was badass, plain and simple, and he lifted his hands as if signaling to the world his victory over the daunting task that he'd even managed to do in record time.

The only problem in Uzumaki Naruto's perfect stormy day, however, happened to come when some belligerent god decided that there could be no good things in Uzumaki Naruto's life and decided to send a bolt of lightning to strike him down because of it.


	2. Son of the Thunderbolt

**Son of the Thunderbolt**

* * *

Today was not a good day to be the Kyuubi no Kitsune.

Not in any way, shape or form.

The creature was old. Incredibly old. Old enough to predate the shinobi system, even. The Kyuubi was an immortal, sentient construct of chakra that liked nothing more than spending its time sleeping or eating, lazing about in its den or otherwise resting. It had few joys in life, but they were simple and it was content with them.

That is why it did not mind finding itself in its current location. The barely lit boiler-room like dungeon it was currently located in was not too different from the caves it tended to choose as temporary dwellings, it was beyond where humans could disturb it and if it ever found itself hungry, it could always apply a bit of subtle manipulation to the host's psyche to make a giant rabbit or two appears so it could chase and devour them.

All in all, the Kyuubi found itself disliking its host solely on principle, because it hated all human beings and did not discriminate about it.

It had spent seven years (And five months) enjoying the luxuries of its location, pushing its record naps (For they always were disturbed by a foolish human) every day, enjoying its reprieve from having to share a planet with the disgusting little maggots that kept annoying it at all times.

Of course, the Kyuubi mused, nothing could ever go its way. There was always something that would ruin its afternoon nap (usually a human trying to drive it away from its dwelling for the stupidest of reasons… The Kyuubi generally couldn't care less about miners trapped on the other side of its bulk), there was always something that would ruin the current dwelling for it (usually said miners growing desperate with trying to drive it away).

So of course, even the most perfect of places to rest had been ruined by a human.

The Kyuubi would have cursed its host, cursed him to hell, to oblivion and the damnation of mankind. But truth be told, it was too busy to do so. After all, the Kyuubi was an immortal creature and did not fancy dying on the perfect day to take a nap (read: every day ever), which would be the end result of allowing its host to die.

Unlike its peers, the Kyuubi had never been defeated in a fight and had never died with any of its hosts. And it had never conversed with its peers about what would happen if the above happened, because it had been the first to be sealed inside a ninja and used as a power source and thus, from then on, lacked any contact whatsoever with the other Tailed Beasts.

These particular gaps in its knowledge lead to the fox being completely terrified of the idea dying. It did not know that it could reform with time.

So when the host was struck by the wrathful bolt of lightning, the Kyuubi found itself off its lazy ass and working to save the little human's life. Now, while it'd gently helped heal its two prior hosts before, this was certainly wildly different. Whereas only an instant was passing on the outside, the Kyuubi did not share humanity's perspective of time and could accelerate or decelerate the speed of its thoughts with but one of them. Controlling the composition of its brain and the particularities of synapses helped immensely in this regard.

In the instant in which many could have done nothing, the Kyuubi was hard at work analyzing in depth the effects that the coursing lightning bolt had on the body. The bolt itself did not carry kinetic force, but the displacement of air caused by the heat it did carry had supplanted it and knocked the boy off the tree he'd been standing in. Unfortunately for him, this made the situation slightly worse.

But it didn't matter. The Kyuubi could see, in slow motion, as the charge of the lightning bolt, carrying more power and heat than anything other than a tailed beast should be allowed to, ran through the boy's body. The organs began to fail and shut down, the ones that weren't toasted by the bolt's power failing due to the powerful electrical discharge.

There was no time to spend lazing about right now. The boy's physical body was just not designed to take such ridiculous and vulgar displays of power. The Kyuubi didn't know much in the way of biology, not human biology at least, but it did know about chakra. Being a sentient entity made of chakra, it could count itself as one of the few creatures in the world that knew just about everything there was to know about chakra.

And with that knowledge came the answer to this particular, and frightening, problem.

As the boy's organs were shut down and, or, destroyed by the electrical discharge from the sky, the fox began to forcefully manipulate the boy's chakra. The seal would have stopped him in this task, seeing how much control he was exerting over the boy, but it was made by a human who hadn't lived even a fraction of the time the Kyuubi had and despite all of the man's genius, it didn't take long to find and exploit the same loophole that it had used with its other hosts to annoy them when they annoyed him.

The humans didn't know that it controlled every little bit of its chakra there was, including the bits of it that were running through their chakra coils, augmenting and healing them. This particular seal kept a consistent flux of the Kyuubi's chakra into the host's coil system, which gave the fox a ridiculous amount of control over it.

Had the Kyuubi wanted to, it could have fried its host's coils and barred him from ever being a ninja. But of course, the Kyuubi was far too lazy to be vindictive.

Taking forceful control of every bit of chakra in the boy's body, the fox began using its knowledge of the wondrous energy to modify it. The boy's chakra definitely couldn't handle the massive discharge. But the chakra could, and would, take care of the problem. First, moving faster than it ever had before, the chakra was lead to the still coursing electrical discharge and directed to absorb it. Healing the boy would be pointless if the electricity in his body just fried him again immediately afterwards, and there was nothing to ground the lightning to.

Therefore, the chakra ate it.

It wasn't much more complicated than that. Chakra has many wondrous properties, adapting to the basic elements of the world being one of them. Admittedly, the Kyuubi was certain that trying to do something like this was completely ridiculous, and the chakra usually would just be disrupted by the superior power.

With the backing of the Kyuubi's own, immensely powerful, chakra, however, the intense power of the lightning bolt soon was completely dispelled, as if it'd hit the ground instead of the little boy. The chakra was behaving weirdly afterwards, but there was nothing the Kyuubi could do about such a thing.

The boy's coils had been adapted so they could handle the electrified chakra as best as possible in the least amount of time possible. Admittedly, the chakra was making jerky, almost crackling movements now instead of flowing like the fluid it was supposed to flow like. It did, however, offer the Kyuubi a little help.

The boy's own chakra stopped his heart when it came into contact with it. As the chakra flowed to all the damaged areas of the body, it had the side effect of acting the same as a small discharge of electricity would, tensing the muscles as it passed. It would probably be immensely uncomfortable, but so long as the kid lived, the Kyuubi couldn't truly care less.

Taking control of the chakra once more, the Kyuubi directed it to restart the heart… And it found itself having to use the boy's chakra to adapt his muscles and organs to itself. It was odd, and kind of annoying, to have to do so, but if the boy's heart was paralyzed every time the chakra touched it then he'd die in a ridiculously short amount of time by his own body's failure to cope with itself, and that simply wouldn't do.

The unnecessary muscles, the Kyuubi left for later, focusing mostly on those vital to live. Its lack of knowledge of human biology meant that it couldn't truly know which was which, though, so it went with carefully modifying every organ it came across, getting them used and impervious to the chakra's presence.

It took what you would call 'forever' to go through the entirety of the boy's body, the Kyuubi having sped up its perception of time until the point where it had extended the instant the bolt struck Naruto into the several hours it had required to fix Naruto's body so the lightning bolt didn't kill him.

Admittedly, it could do little to alleviate the pain of the burns. Because that would require giving a crap about its host's pain, and the Kyuubi found itself feeling like the host deserved such immense pain for forcing it to do such extensive regenerative and reconstructive work in such a short time.

Settling back down, laying down on the dry floor (which was an improvement over the perpetually damp conditions prior to this) and snorting, the Kyuubi felt slightly annoyed at having had to go through such a thing. Its head rested in its front paws and it let out a loud whine as the mental exhaustion caught up. Sleep came soon after as the Kyuubi went for a very well deserved nap.

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto, age seven, groaned. A pitiful sound that in an instant conveyed all of his pain, all of his sorrow and all of his frustration. Even the coldest hearted of the nurses assigned to his care would have found their heart melted to a pile of goo by the pitiful sound that displayed the depths of Naruto's despair at the moment. Unfortunately for him, it'd barely been high enough for Naruto himself to hear it, so nobody came running to see to him.

Of course, Naruto himself didn't know that people had been afraid he'd likely never regain his hearing, but small blessings like this tend to go unnoticed, so while he should have been happy to even hear himself, he could only feel his own misery at the state he was in.

His eyes opened slightly at first, though he could only suffer in silence at the brightness of the light, his body refusing to cooperate when it came to letting out a pained grunt. Instead, he found himself slowly blinking, time and time again, as the light became a little more bearable each time.

He couldn't concentrate nor could he focus on the fuzzy environment. Not considering he felt pain in every part of his body at once. Constantly. Naruto's existence was pain, and his little seven year old brain was definitely not built to handle such a thing. Fortunately for him, Naruto was not conscious much longer.

It wouldn't be until much later that he'd wake up from his dreamless sleep, this time not being in constant and unbearable agony. He drifted from sleep to awareness, slowly but surely managing to actually wake up instead of get a few moments of agonizing awareness before falling down to sleep.

Unbeknownst to Naruto, it had been a full week before he could wake up entirely.

He would be much thankful, however, for the three kind hearted nurses that had made sure he was as comfortable as possible when he did. His throat was dry and he found himself dearly wishing for someone to bring him something to fix said problem. He'd been given a warm cup of tea that he found immensely satisfying, letting it take away the dryness of the desert that had formed on the back of his throat.

The two male nurses were running back and forth, trying their hardest to keep Naruto comfortable in his bed and fetching warm soup so that he could eat. He didn't know why people complained about the food of the hospital, 'cause he'd had much, much worse at the orphanage. He didn't care in the least, though, busy as he was enjoying the attention of the three people who were even now making sure he was as comfortable as possible.

The 'Thank You' he tried to give them (the Old Man had told him that even if he discarded most manners, being polite when you're thankful never hurts anyone and makes people more willing to help you again later) was rather garbled and almost unintelligible.

If he'd been able to, Naruto would've complained about the dreary and sterile white room he'd been thrown in. The fact that it was sorely lacking in decoration didn't truly matter to him, but all the white everywhere was really maddening to look at, and there wasn't much more to do since his limbs refused to cooperate.

The blond wound up very bored, very quickly, but there was nothing that could be done except bothering the nurses to try and help alleviate his boredom.

It would take another night's sleep before Naruto could speak properly.

Then again, he'd been entirely too happy that morning.

The old man showed up that day! And even stopped to read him a story from a book that he'd brought! The old man, to Naruto, was the epitome of coolness and basically everything that Naruto wanted to be, and this was only further confirmed by the fact that the man had cleared his schedule, which Naruto knew to be incredibly busy, just so he could spend the entire day with Naruto.

They'd spent the entirety of the day playing in Naruto's room, with him adapting many games so that they could play them without much in the way of movement (Because Naruto's limbs were still incredibly sluggish and it hurt to make the slightest movements) and had explained what had happened. He'd also taken the time to scold Naruto for playing in the rain during a thunderstorm, taking special time to mention that the fact he'd survived was amazing in and of itself.

In fact, the old man had actually spent some time helping Naruto get acquainted with his new body. And it was new because Naruto barely recognized it. After all, he hadn't had that wicked scar in his chest before, and he hadn't had those weird black lines all over his stomach and chest either. Plus, all new scars in interesting shapes decorated his arms and legs. All in all, Naruto thought it was frikkin' awesome, even though they hurt a lot when he moved.

The old man gave him a much simplified explanation of what had happened. When he'd climbed to the top of the tree, a lightning bolt had come rushing down from the sky and struck him. Which was the reason why playing outside during a thunderstorm was a bad idea, and why climbing a tree during a thunderstorm was an even worse one. Naruto couldn't deny it, after all it hurt like a total bitch.

They spent the rest of the day after the explanation playing, though Naruto didn't know that the reason they did so was so that the old man could help him get used to moving his limbs after the damage and the time spent recovering atrophied his control of them. Surprisingly, by the end of the day, despite still being a bit stiff and clumsy, Naruto had regained most of his arms and legs' mobility.

Even if they still hurt a bit when he moved them, he was happy with it.

When night came and Naruto started to feel exhaustion catching up to him, he had laid on his bed once again and asked the old man what it was he did for a living (because the old man had only explained how he was busy all the time before).

The old man smiled. "Well, Naruto-kun, I'm first and foremost a ninja," he spoke, voice filled with pride as he spoke of his profession, "though these days, I'm stuck behind a desk far more often than I used to go on missions back when I was young."

Naruto was fascinated by shinobi. They were, after all, the protectors of the village. It was something he'd always dreamed about, being a cool and respected shinobi who was strong, yet kind. He'd always dreamed of his parents being such people. And now he finally had confirmation that the old man who brought him candy sometimes and played with him when nobody else would happened to be one of them. "Could you teach me?" asked the boy, his anticipation shining in his eyes.

The old man chuckled. "You're a bit too young."

Naruto pouted, looking up at the old man from his position in the bed and crossing his arms. "I'm not young! I'm nearly eight years old already!"

The old man laughed again. "You're closer to seven than you are to eight," he explained, closing his eyes and seeming to fall into thought for a few seconds before continuing, "The academy's term starts in six days."

Naruto brightened almost instantly, nearly shooting into a sitting position and groaning slightly when the quick movement affected his wounds. The old man put a hand on his right arm, the one uninjured part of his body, and gently pushed him back down into the mattress. "That means I can-"

"Yes, Naruto-kun." The old man didn't expect Naruto to cheer the way he did upon hearing his words, but he once again went to stop Naruto from performing sudden movements that caused him pain. Clearly, the boy was more than a bit excited at the news, if he could ignore his own pain to cheer about it.

"Awesome! I'll be the greatest shinobi you've ever seen!" the boy cheered, pointing at the old man.

"Oh? You will?" the older one asked, raising his eyebrows in clear challenge. "Will you be better than the Hokage, Naruto-kun?"

"Of course, old man! I'll be the best there ever was!" Naruto cried, raising his fist in clear defiance of anyone who would dare imply otherwise.

"Well, that means you will need to work very hard, Naruto-kun. After all, I'm the strongest ninja in the village, and we're all very strong." The mirth in the old man's voice was offset by the kind, grandfatherly expression in his face. "But I'm putting my faith in you. I believe you can be as strong, if not even stronger, than the Hokage."

Naruto blinked. "You're the-"

The Hokage raised a finger to his lips and made a shushing noise. "Wouldn't want everyone else to believe you're getting special treatment, right?" he asked with a wink as he stood up from the chair he'd been sitting in. "I'm afraid I must got. I did put off my entire workload for the day and thus I must catch up before I can head home."

At least Naruto had the decency to look sheepish, since the old man had put off his work to share the day with him. He still accepted the chuckle and hair ruffling (his hair was noticeably shorter than before, but Naruto was one to neglect haircuts often so it wasn't that big a loss to him) that came with the words.

* * *

Naruto narrowed his eyes and carefully calculated each and every single one of his movements, moving as little as possible, being as subtle as subtle can be…

… Well, as subtle as someone wearing a bright orange tracksuit can be anyway…

… And then he cupped his hands in front of his mouth and took a deep breath. "PERVERT!" he yelled, as loudly as he possibly could. The man in front of him jumped twenty feet into the air out of sheer surprise, easily clearing the hard wooden panels that separated the hot springs proper from the rest of the facility that housed them.

Naruto grinned widely and, faster than fast, he turned around and fled the area before the man could land on the ground, the ever present grin in his face widening with the exhilaration brought from high speed movement. With a powerful leap, he jumped into the dividing wall that separated the street from the hot springs, landing skillfully on the narrow surface atop it. With another powerful leap, he jumped into the nearest building, a one-story tall store that sold souvenirs to tourists related to the hotsprings, most likely owned by the same person who owned them.

And then he began running quickly, leaping over the gaps between roofs when he had to. He knew he could escape the old man he'd startled, because he was young, fit and incredibly fast while the old pervert would most likely get the beating up of a lifetime for peeping on the girls at the hot springs and would most likely fail to follow his trail afterwards.

The man was a ninja, no doubt, there was just something about him, about his extravagant manner of dress as well as the fact that he'd managed to walk in wooden sandals without making the slightest noise, that led him to that conclusion. But no matter how good he was at a ninja, Naruto was certain he was better at dodging than the old man could be at tracking.

Half an hour later, he was proven wrong when the old man dangled him from one of his legs atop one of the taller buildings in Konoha. "You know, I should return every punch and kick to you, you little asshat."

Naruto took a minute to observe the white haired man. The spiky white mane that trailed behind him was in disarray, sticks and mud clinging to it. He had bruises all over his face, which had red tattoos marked into it, most likely to hide the signs of aging by drawing the eye towards them. He also had a forehead protector, though it had horns and the character for oil in it rather than that of any village.

His getup was just bizarre, but it had now been reduced to rags that had definitely seen better days, turned from a red and green ensemble into red, green and mostly brown. The fact that he had bruises on every bit of exposed skin as well as a very clearly broken nose meant that the ladies had taken the time to be very thorough in expressing their discontent with his behavior.

Naruto grinned widely, causing the man to look even more furious than he had before. "You totally had it coming," Naruto informed him.

"Why!? I was just admiring the beauty of the female form!" the man cried passionately, shaking Naruto as he did and most likely alerting the people who were below, who now looked up for a brief moment before turning around and continuing with their day, accepting the scuffle as routine for Naruto, "I am the great and gallant Jiraiya of the Sannin! The greatest Super Pervert the world has ever seen, brat! You interrupted my research at a critical moment! Now you have delayed my masterpiece, and you have to suffer the consequences!"

"Oh, do I?" Naruto asked, with a cheeky grin. "And what are you gonna do about it?"

"We'll let your guardians decide that." Jiraiya said, with a feral grin in his face. "Now, where do you live, little brat? You kinda look like a Yamanaka to me. Are you one?"

"Hell naw! If I were related to that gossip queen Ino, I'd kill myself!" Naruto replied, offended by the mere implication of it. "My name's Uzumaki Naruto, and you better remember it, 'cause I'll be your boss pretty soon!"

"My boss? You wanna Hokage, brat?" Jiraiya asked, lifting Naruto a little higher up so he could look at him in the eye.

"You bet your ass I'll be Hokage, pervert!" Naruto said, eyes narrowed and filled with determination.

"Well, that's a good dream, I guess…" Jiraiya spoke, shrugging with his free hand. "Why do you wanna be Hokage anyway?"

"'Cause I'm the only one awesome enough to be Hokage, of course! The old man's cool and all, but he's really old and just between you and me, I think he's going senile."

Jiraiya put the kid down, sighing as he did. Absolutely zero fucks were giving about dropping the kid on his head when he did. "You know, I kinda wanted to get you in trouble, but now I don't want to anymore."

Naruto raised an eyebrow as he stood up, rubbing his poor and abused head to try to stamp out the pain. "Usually, that doesn't happen until I've led someone halfway across the village," the boy spoke, raising an eyebrow in clear confusion, "so what's up with you?"

"I was a total ass when I was a kid too," Jiraiya admitted, grinning widely, "I used to spend all my time annoying the crap out of my teachers at the academy, and my favorite targets were the stuck up kids coming from clans. Back then, if you didn't come from a clan you didn't amount to anything."

Naruto's eyebrows shot up to his head. "Back then? You look ancient, I didn't think you were young enough to have attended the academy."

Jiraiya scoffed. "Cheeky brat."

The blond stuck his tongue out, then offered the white haired man a grin as they both sat down, the three story building's ledge proving surprisingly comfortable. "Want to know something interesting? The Hokage was my teacher when I was a genin."

Once again, Naruto's eyebrows shot up to nearly his hairline. "He was!?" the question came out before Naruto even had time to think it up.

"Yep." Jiraiya confirmed, nodding towards Naruto.

"That's kinda cool, actually…"

The white haired man laughed. "Kinda cool? That's awesome, brat! The old man trained me so well that I could be Hokage if I wanted to be!" he boasted, grinning proudly as he did.

"Then why aren't you!? Why would you not want to be Hokage!?" To Naruto, the idea itself was completely ridiculous and nonsensical. After all, why would one reject the prestige and honor that came with being the highest authority and most powerful shinobi in the village?

"Well, if I became Hokage, I'd be stuck behind a desk most of the time, and that sucks," Jiraiya began to explain, looking wistful as he did, "plus I would be barred from doing my research and I wouldn't have time to write my books. That's why I took a genin team, you know, to train someone who could be Hokage for me."

"For some reason, I really can't see you as a good teacher," Naruto said, grinning widely and looking not unlike someone who'd just been told the sky was green. He was clearly on the verge of laughing at the notion of Jiraiya training someone to be Hokage.

"Hah! I trained the greatest Hokage there was, brat!" the white haired man boasted, turning his head to face the Hokage Monument, where the stern faces of the four Hokage looked down on the village. "See the fourth head there? That's Namikaze Minato, my very own star pupil and the Fourth Hokage!"

"Yeah, right," Naruto said, rolling his eyes, "As if an old pervert like you could train someone to be as badass as the Yondaime Hokage."

"I totally did!" the indignant jounin spoke, eyes narrowed in clear offence.

"Sure you did."

This exchange continued on for quite a few minutes, which would have made the people below annoyed, were it not escalating with more creative and ridiculous chains of insults every repetition. Eventually, Naruto won the insulting contest because, in Jiraiya's own words, he couldn't use his full repertoire of curse words against a beginner like Naruto.

Being a super pervert, the blond boy was inclined to agree that Jiraiya would know a few more colorful ways to call someone a nincompoop than Naruto's own admittedly limited vocabulary could provide. Even so, he still lorded his victory over Jiraiya.

"Anyway, shouldn't you be at the academy or something?" Jiraiya asked, looking at the sun and guessing at what time it would be.

"I guess I should," Naruto said, shrugging, "but it's not like I'm actually learning anything there, so… It's pointless to go, really."

The elder scoffed. "If you wanna be Hokage, brat, you gotta learn the basics, and you learn those at the academy," He began, looking at the distant building that happened to be close to the Hokage Tower, "believe me, I was an idiot who didn't pay attention in class and Sensei needed to beat everything I'd learned wrong out of me with a stick."

"I can totally see the old man whacking you with a stick," Naruto said, laughing, "because you're such a horrible student."

Jiraiya grinned and ruffled his hair. "I was right. You are a cheeky brat."

"I am not a cheeky brat!" replied the blond, crossing his arms and pouting.

"Anyway, you still should learn the basics, and that's what the academy's for," explained the older man, "besides, why would you think they are useless anyway?"

"I didn't say the basics are useless," Naruto corrected, looking somewhat angry as he did, "but I can't do them. I've tried really hard, but every time I try to do the bunshin they just explode as soon as I create them, the henge feels like someone is poking me with a cattle prod every time I try to do it and the Kawarimi is a lost cause."

Jiraiya hummed. "You know, I've never heard of chakra control that horrible."

"It's not my chakra control!" Naruto cried in indignation, "why does everyone think it's my chakra control!? I've trained my ass off doing that stupid leaf sticking thing! I even went through the more advanced exercises and I can do most of them with no problem! I can even walk on water!" admittedly, walking on water was a bit of a stretch, more like take a few steps and then sink, "but no matter how hard I try, I can never get any jutsu right!"

The white haired man seemed shocked at the revelation of this. "You sure kid?"

"I'm pretty damn sure that it's not my chakra control! I'm one of the best in the class!"

The white haired man sighed. "You probably have some sort of problem with your chakra coils. It's rare, but it sometimes happen that people just have trouble molding chakra to use jutsu, even though they can control their chakra just fine."

"What do you mean?" asked the curious kid, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, just like there are people who are born with bloodline limits that give them special abilities, some are born with special limitations. It's shitty, but it's your lot in life and you've gotta deal with it," explained Jiraiya, looking forlorn as he did, "though usually these come from birth and you would've been told if you had any defects from birth when you entered the academy…"

"The old man said something about my chakra behaving weird, but that was back when I got hit by a lightning bolt…" Naruto admitted, tapping his chin.

"You WHAT!?" Jiraiya yelled, nearly falling off his perch on the edge of the rooftop.

"Oh, yeah, that. Well, back when I was seven, I think, I got hit by a lightning bolt. Apparently, climbing a tree during a thunderstorm is not a very good idea," he spoke, shrugging when he dismissed the stupidity of his own actions, "it gave me all sorts of cool scars, though, including one huge burn scar where the lightning bolt hit me, right over the heart!"

Jiraiya seemed absolutely sobered, any form of good mood or cheer removed. "Okay, you shouldn't have survived that. If you were an adult and it hit you on an arm, maybe. But if it struck you on the chest, right over your heart… you should be dead kid."

The academy student didn't seem concerned. "Yeah, well, I couldn't move for a week and I was really, really clumsy for a week after that, but I've been fine ever since."

"Let's not look a gift horse on the mouth and just thank whatever deity was responsible for your survival. Anyway, you said your chakra behaved weirdly?" Jiraiya asked, crossing his arms and clearly laying that conversation to rest.

"Yeah, well… It was really noticeable when I was learning how to float leaves on my head. They always kept being set on fire or exploding when I put too much chakra to stick them to me. Luckily, trees are a bit more resilient than that, though when I blast off them by putting too much chakra there's always a nasty smell left behind," explained the blond, looking slightly confused as he did.

Jiraiya sighed, and then rubbed his chin. "When you sank into the water… did it ever shock you?"

"Not really… though the man who taught me how to do water walking did get a shock or two when he touched the water…"

The white haired man blinked and then grinned at Naruto. "Well, I think I just figured out what your problem is. Run along to the academy, now, I was supposed to report to sensei like an hour ago, before you interrupted me."

Naruto scoffed, but nevertheless he stood up. "Will I see you again? You're kinda fun, if a pervert."

"Sure. In fact, we might be seeing each other more often than you'd think."

And with those parting words, Jiraiya moved swiftly and leaped off the wall without even bothering to stand up first, showing his dexterity and agility by pushing off the wall he'd stuck his feet onto and becoming little more than a blur moving towards the Hokage tower.

Naruto blinked. "Heh… I wonder what he meant…"

Deciding not to dwell on it, Naruto began his own way towards the academy.

"Now that I think about it… he could've dropped me off, if he can move so much faster than I can! Dammit, I should have asked!"


	3. Teacher Shuffle

**Teacher Shuffle**

* * *

Jiraiya of the Sannin, a man without a surname and without dignity, could put the fear of perverts in anyone. It was a well known fact that he was certainly the second strongest man in the Land of Fire, and that was only because nobody was truly certain how much Sarutobi's abilities had declined with his age. The fact that Sarutobi couldn't truly bring himself to attack his students meant that if Jiraiya went rogue, absolutely nobody would be anything more than a mild speed bump in front of him.

The reason Jiraiya had absolutely no problems with getting the crap beaten out of him by angry, scantily clad females every once in a while was just his way of showing that yes, he was still very much active, kicking and as tough as nails.

He was also the number one candidate for Godaime, and everyone knew Sarutobi only had a few more years of service left in him at the most. Therefore, absolutely nobody batted an eyelash when the jounin gathering that preceded graduation from the academy had him sitting next to Sarutobi, behind the Hokage's desk, arms crossed and no perverted grin on his face.

The man could get serious if he absolutely had to.

"Kakashi is late," said a jounin who looked unkempt. The man had a very noticeable need to shave, from the full beard he sported, and he looked as if he'd just woken up to report in.

"He always is," a man with a dark purple colored bodysuit spoke, rolling his eyes.

"Or maybe I'm just early and like to pretend I'm not here so I can hear what my colleagues speak about behind my back," informed conversationally a silver haired man who was leaning against a wall, destroying the genjutsu that had hidden him from view.

"Disregarding your lack of professionalism, we all know why you were called here. There are twelve jounin in this room, counting myself and Jiraiya, and there will be thirty graduates this year," informed the Hokage, closing his eyes and taking a deep inhalation of his pipe's smoke, feeling its calming effects spread across his body, helping him prepare for what was to come.

"Can I opt out this year?" asked Kakashi, raising his hand as if he were still in school, a tradition kept in this setting mostly because they were dealing with school… in a sense. The jounin had an odd sense of humor years back.

"I have already told you, Kakashi, that you have a treasure trove of jutsu and abilities that you should pass on to the next generation," countered Sarutobi, eyes narrowed, "and I have already given you the freedom to reject those students that don't measure up to your standards too many times."

A female jounin coughed, disguising her chuckle. The male next had made a rather funny joke, apparently, but it had been low enough in volume that they'd only caught him speaking, not about what. Kakashi did not care very much about it, though.

"Hokage-sama, with all due respect, I don't believe I am fit to lead a genin team," explained the silver haired jounin, his tone laced with the respect proper to the station of his leader, yet at the same time enough nonchalance that some would think him a disrespectful jackass. It was interesting to see how expressive Kakashi could be with everything but his face, always hidden behind his mask and forehead protector.

"Kakashi, I am quite confident in your capability to lead a genin team," explained Sarutobi, "and I do believe you are most necessary for the team that has been assembled for you this year. I assume that you have already read the dossier on your potential students?"

"As a matter of fact, I have, Hokage-sama," explained Kakashi, "which is the reason why I am more forceful than usual with my insistence that I not be their jounin teacher. The three of them have bright future careers, and they would most likely not flourish under me. Prospective Genin Haruno is good on paper, but her affinities lie counter to all of mine. I can't teach her genjutsu, as I am dependant on my Sharingan for it, I can't teach her medical jutsu and she needs a kunoichi teacher to fix the many psychological issues she seems to have. I wouldn't know how to approach her in the slightest,"

"Interesting analysis," admitted Sarutobi, "I admit that Prospective Genin Haruno was not my first choice for the kunoichi that would fill the third spot in this team, but I do believe she has a future as a support, and I know that her two teammates would need proper support."

"That they would, Hokage-sama, but I don't think Haruno would be the best option for this. The both of them need someone that could act as a restraint if need be, as both seem to be extremely reckless in their dealings. I believe that putting them in the same team is a colossal mistake, as they both dislike each other quite intensely. The reasons why escape me, but as they are, they simply would not pass the Bell Test, either the first or second parts," continued Kakashi, looking as passionate as Kakashi ever did, but conveying a firm belief in his own words that was at odds with the man's nonchalant appearance.

Sarutobi hummed in consideration of his thoughts, reclining a little in his chair, eyes closed and mind contemplative.

Next to him, Jiraiya shifted slightly.

"While I am the best option in paper for Genin Uchiha," there was no need to pretend Sasuke wouldn't become a genin, "I believe the boy would need a firmer hand than mine. Can I suggest he be given as an apprentice to Gai? I believe he would benefit very well from lots upon lots of physical exercise to work out his unresolved aggression issues," he said with a bit of humor, knowing that they would never give Sasuke to Gai, but becoming more fond of the idea by the second, "of course, I would offer to tutor him if he awoke his Sharingan, but as it is… I cannot in good conscience say that I would be a decent teacher for him."

"He has a point," Jiraiya conceded, looking at Sarutobi, then turning back to Kakashi and raising an eyebrow, "but you haven't said anything about the third genin."

"I believe I cannot teach Genin Uzumaki," again, no need to pretend he wouldn't become a genin, no village was stupid enough to let their jinchuuriki run around as a civilian, "while the Sharingan would be a most useful weapon against his tenant, I don't buy too much stock into the rumors about its capability to control the fox in case of an emergency. Furthermore, with his particular condition the boy could become a specialist in demolition and wide scale destruction, neither of which is my specialty. While I possess many, many jutsu that would be useful to him, I am first and foremost an assassin. My game is subtlety, and subtlety he does not possess."

Jiraiya nodded at him. "You are a Raiton master, aren't you Kakashi?" the white haired man asked the silver haired younger one.

"Perhaps not the best, but yes, I am a Raiton master," agreed Kakashi, not bothering with false modesty. He didn't need it, considering he'd created his own jutsu of that element a decade and a half before.

"Are you aware of Naruto's condition?" asked Jiraiya, raising an eyebrow, "and no, I don't mean his being a jinchuuriki," he added, seeing the faces thrown at him by the crowd, however, he believed that none of them were aware of it.

Sarutobi sighed and gestured for Jiraiya to elaborate, unwilling to explain about the memory that he was certain had shaved a few years off his lifespan.

"Ignoring the irrelevant details, Naruto has the strongest Raiton affinity ever," said Jiraiya, simply, "I heard the boy's testimony myself. The affinity is so strong that he has difficulty molding non-elemental chakra, as his chakra tends to the lightning element regardless of what he is doing with it. I believe he probably won't ever be use any other element."

"To mitigate this problem, I've had Naruto learn advanced chakra control as soon as possible," said Sarutobi, catching their attention, "regardless… I agree with you Kakashi. You will not receive a team this year. However, you will tutor Genin Uchiha as he awakens his Sharingan."

"Hokage-sama," Kakashi said, as a method of dismissing himself, and then he turned around and walked out of the room.

"Well, now that we're done with that… There is still time for last minute changes in regards to the team rosters. We need to reshuffle the teams to accommodate for the three genin left without a team," spoke Sarutobi, sighing as he thought of how annoying Kakashi's insights were when they were dropped on him right now instead of when he had time to deal with it on his own terms.

"I believe there's only two. Kakashi might have been onto something with his suggestion of what to do with the Uchiha boy," spoke Jiraiya with a grin.

The same unkempt jounin from before snorted. "Actually, I agree with that too."

Soon, all the other jounin were sharing their agreement on that regard.

"I had dismissed it as a joke, but yes, I can see the wisdom in such an action. Then, I will relay the information to Gai myself," said Sarutobi, knowing that the man's reactions to such a challenge from his eternal rival, as Sarutobi would word it, would range from 'Hilarious' to 'Bloody Hilarious'.

A female jounin, different from the one that had laughed before, mostly because she had completely disregarded the jounin uniform and instead gone with a dress that looked as if it were created from intertwined bandages that, raised her hand and was granted word. "Before I was contacted to take a genin team, I entertained the idea of taking the Haruno girl as an apprentice. I believe I can help her reach her true potential in the arts of genjutsu, at the very least."

"Not to mention having a strong female role model would most likely do the girl some good," mentioned Jiraiya, "might be enough to convince the girl that you can be gorgeous while kicking ass."

"You flatter me, Jiraiya-sama," Kurenai said with a light blush dusting her features… that was actually of rage, knowing the man was a perfect beyond measure and was, more likely than not, undressing her in his mind.

"I agree. I approve, then, Genin Haruno will be assigned to you as an apprentice, Jounin Yuuhi," Sarutobi said with a nod, "now there is just one genin to deal with…"

Jiraiya cleared his throat, right then. "I have a proposition for this," he began, looking at everyone in the room in the eyes for a full second, the pause making his words seem even more dramatic than they would be under normal causes, "and it will require cooperation from at least some of you."

"Please, go on then," said Sarutobi.

"It's quite simple. For reasons that are my own and private, I can't take Genin Uzumaki as an apprentice as I wish to do," began Jiraiya once again, crossing his arms. "However, I still wish to teach him when I have the opportunity, in the downtime between expeditions. During the time I cannot teach or watch over him, he will need to be attached to another team, hence the need from cooperation from one of you. I believe it best if he is allowed to connect with his peers."

"Fine by me," said the same unshaven jounin that disregarded protocol, "I've got the Ino Shika Cho trio, and while they have the potential to work as well together as their parents did, I think that they could use a bit of training on how to work with people that don't specifically synergize with their specializations."

"I will offer my own team, as well," said a jounin with black pants and a black turtleneck sweater, dark, circular glasses in his eyes that he pushed up. The bandanna atop his head hid his forehead from view, the glasses hid his eyes and careful muscle control stopped anything from escaping from the lower face. It was a very nondescript ninja. "Although I am not certain on their chances to pass my test, I think that he could offer a good source of motivation for them. Whether they pass or not, I will still offer my services to aid the boy. He was very dilligent student when I taught him chakra control, and I do believe he would be a positive influence on my team, at least outside the classroom."

"Thank you, Asuma, Ebisu," said Sarutobi, nodding to the two, then he turned to the rest of the room, to see who else would offer.

"I will offer my own team, once again," prompted the Yuuhi woman, looking resolute, "I believe he would be a positive influence on both of my kunoichi, and I do believe that prospective Genin Inuzuka could use the competition to better himself. On the flipside, prospective Genin Aburame might be a good influence on Genin Uzumaki."

"Very well, then," Sarutobi said, nodding, "if there is nobody who wishes to make a change in their team's composition, then this meeting is adjourned and you are all dismissed," the Hokage explained, seeing them nod as a group, shout an acknowledgement and remove themselves from his office.

Tired and weary, Sarutobi collapsed on his seat, rubbing his temples. "Dammit, I'd been hoping that Kakashi would want to teach his teacher's son," spoke the old man, sighing.

"He wants to," Jiraiya said, shaking his head and standing up, looking outside the window, "the boy is still living in the past, that much is clear, and would probably like nothing more than to rebuild his own team with the team he was given. He's just afraid of it ending like his own team, particularly considering that it would mean Naruto's death."

"You think?" Sarutobi asked, raising an eyebrow.

"One of my shadow clones had a conversation after he left and dispelled a short while ago. He'll be teaching Naruto Raiton. I think that it should be enough for Naruto to worm his way into Kakashi's heart. The boy is like a fungus, he grows on you very fast and he's very hard to get rid off once he's there. I've only seen him from a distance and I'm infected," said the old pervert with a grin on his face.

"Well, that saves me the time of summoning Kakashi and asking him to explain his actions," said Sarutobi, smiling as he inhaled his pipe's smoke once more, trying his hardest to stave off the effects of an impending headache with it.

"By the way… I think Konoha's kunoichi get sexier by generation. Otoha-chan's all grown up!" said the white haired man with a lecherous grin on his face.

Sarutobi snorted. "So I take it you've been to the hotsprings, then?"

"Yep! I found some primo grade research material there, too. Remember that perverted little girl I told you about a few years back? Well, now she's old enough to model for me in her nurse uniform!" said Jiraiya, crying tears of manly, perverted and youthful joy.

Sarutobi chuckled. "Then I believe we can expect your book faster than usual, too?"

"You can bet your ass on that, Sensei!" the sage said, nodding and grinning with great vigor.

* * *

"And that's why you should never mix bananas with salt," finished explaining Naruto, looking over the class around him and then sitting back down.

"Surprisingly enlightening," Iruka admitted, a grimace on his face, "yet completely horrifying, I don't think I will ever be able to look at chickens without wincing anymore."

Mizuki shivered. "Naruto, the next time someone asks for details, please do not elaborate," he said, trying to calm himself down.

"Okay, Mizuki-sensei, but what if it's a teacher?" asked Naruto, tilting his head.

"Especially if it's a teacher!" answered the pale haired teacher, groaning as he tried to dispel the images that were still in his head. Rubber chickens do not work that way!

Meanwhile, several of the prospective genin made it a point to never, EVER, piss off Naruto. They knew that he was a prankster, on some level they knew that pissing him off often lead to unpleasant events happening to them, but they had never been truly targeted by the boy in his revenge sprees. Clearly, even the class' resident avenger paled in comparison to what Uzumaki Naruto would unload on you if you did something truly heinous to him.

"Moving on, today we're going to have one quick last review of everything we've seen on all your time on the academy as a mock test for the real genin test," began Iruka, gesturing towards the book on the table as if to tell them to bring out their own books.

Mizuki chuckled when they went for their books. "That's not what he means," he said, clearly amused now that the threat of rubber chickens wasn't hanging above his head, "what he means is that we're gonna go outside and we, that is me and Iruka, are going to watch as your classmates beat the crap out of you. You will try to use everything we've taught you along our years together to try and get out of this with only a few bruises."

"That seems unnecessarily violent," mused a spiky haired boy from the row that was the furthest back from the blackboard.

"It is," Iruka said, "but it's gonna be a whole lot of fun."

"For us, not you," amended Mizuki.

"Speak about yourself. I've been wanting to take a crack at Uchiha in an unrestricted fight since first year!" a boy with facial markings, spiky hair and a hoodie that contained a small dog announced.

"Bring it on, mutt," retorted the Uchiha.

"Hey, you!" Naruto yelled, pointing at Kiba, "get in line, dammit! Sasuke's ass is mine! You can have the leftovers once I'm done with him."

A long "Ewww" was heard, coming from a few of the boys in the class.

Naruto laughed, seeing the extremely put out faces both Kiba and Sasuke had made the very moment the double meaning of his words hit them like a truck. Not that he knew what a truck is, anyway.

* * *

Later that night, Naruto was walking towards his home on one of the worse neighborhoods of Konoha, waving at the two whores that called out to him, slapping the hand of a pickpocket away and overall doing all the things you'd expect a street urchin to do in poorly written fanfiction.

"Look, if it's about the poisonous brownies, I swear to every god out there I didn't know," began Naruto, raising his arms above his shoulders in the universal sign for a cease fire, as he was stopped by a large shape that he couldn't quite make out in the dark.

"Poisonous brownies? Do I even want to know, brat?" asked a rather familiar voice.

"Pervert!" Naruto yelled in realization, "and you probably don't," he added, scratching the back of his neck and looking up at Jiraiya.

"So, kid, I've got a solution to your chakra problem. Here's the bad news: You'll probably never be as good at most techniques as everyone else," said Jiraiya, expression grim, "and, on the flip side, the good news," began the large man, demeanor turning to cheerful in a millisecond, "you'll probably be adding 'Shocking' to the list of words you can describe your pranking repertoire with," said the sagely man, nodding in appreciation at the few thoughts that came to his head.

"You lost me at chakra," said Naruto, tilting his head and looking confused.

Jiraiya groaned and palmed his face, causing Naruto to laugh. This proved that the boy was only acting as if he was too stupid to understand his words, which only frustrated Jiraiya more. At the same time, Jiraiya was reminded of a certain other annoying prankster that kept pretending to be dumber than she really was. Then again, Naruto lacked her… charms.

"So I can do lightning better than most people, I take it?" the blond asked, raising an eyebrow, prompting Jiraiya for confirmation, which he did with a grunt and a nod. "Cool, then. How do I do it?"

"Well, supposedly the most basic exercise is to grab two pieces of chakra and rub them against each other to produce static, from what I've hea-"

Jiraiya was interrupted by the sound of crackling lightning that came from Naruto's outstretched hand. "Hey, this is really cool!" explained Naruto, as he saw a very small bolt travel between his right thumb and pointer finger.

"Okay, that's just ridiculous! It takes even people with big time affinities weeks to master that much!" yelled the clearly incredibly annoyed Jiraiya, "I guess you do get some perks out of not being able to use neutral chakra... hey, try making it travel to all five fingers," encouraged the old man, eager to see what Naruto could really do.

Naruto's brow furrowed as he concentrated fully on what he was doing with his hand. When the old man had explained it, Naruto had thought about how the idea had never come into his head in the slightest. His chakra had always behaved erratically, in comparison with that of his classmates. He had more chakra than all of them combined, but he couldn't do the clone that even the girl with the least chakra in the classroom, Sakura Haruno, could do by the dozen.

He knew his chakra control hadn't been the issue: He was the best in the class by virtue of having progressed to more advanced exercises as soon as he'd mastered the one he'd been doing before. He'd been practicing them religiously for the very simple reason that the old man Hokage had told him to. A ninja needs to be able to use their chakra well, and if Naruto couldn't use his at all, then he couldn't be a ninja, so he needed to learn to control it.

Naruto would be damned before he let anything or anyone come between him and his headband. He wanted, no, he NEEDED to become a big badass ninja. He would show them all that he wasn't some little kid they could just ignore in the hopes that he would go away. He'd force them all to recognize him and do so in such a way that would leave them regretting the fact they'd ever looked down upon him.

The bolts of electricity that he saw when he applied conscious effort to make his chakra behave in the way it naturally preferred to were enough to make him feel elation unlike anything he'd ever felt before. The euphoria that came from having something that could let him call himself a ninja, the ability to shoot motherfucking lightning from his hands, nearly eclipsed the thought that he couldn't use anything but lightning jutsu, if what he had understood from the slightly less old man's words was right.

Now, Naruto wouldn't let his chakra disappoint him by crapping out on him. The old man had suggested he try to make the lightning dancing between his thumb and pointer dance around his entire hand. It was easy enough to make connections between the fingers, his chakra flowed to them and then the bolt of lightning flowed as his chakra instructed it.

He didn't even know that what he was doing was plain absurd and actually breaking several of the laws of physics. He wouldn't have cared if he did.

Naruto wished to go a step further. Instead of making the lightning flow from finger to finger, he wanted to go from thumb to pinky in one swift stroke. Easy in theory… but the first few attempts he made at trying to force the lightning go further away than the distance between any two consecutive fingers proved it much more difficult than he'd thought.

His chakra knew what to do, as the lightning followed the commands… however, halfway to his hand, the bolt he was commanding arched off away from his hand and towards the ground, fizzling the instant it moved more than a few centimeters away from the fingertips. Naruto's forehead creased as he concentrated harder, willing the chakra flowing beneath his skin to concentrate more in his right hand.

He felt ready to curse when the lightning just continued to arch away from its intended target, when he was suddenly, and roughly, grabbed by the shoulder and shaken. This actually surprised the crap out of him and thus he reacted in pure instinct. Twisting around so he was facing whoever had grabbed him, Naruto tried to throw a punch with his right hand… the one that still had all the charged chakra within it.

By pure instinct, he discharged all the chakra in his hand as if he had just thrown something nasty, opening the hand and pointing the palm forward just before he hit the intended target. Had any Hyuuga seen it, they would have called it a very sloppy bastardization of a standard movement in the Gentle Fist style. Of course, just because its sloppy doesn't mean it isn't painful, as Jiraiya soon learned.

All the discharged electricity exploded at once and left Jiraiya feeling both numb and tingly at the same time… luckily, the numbness prevented him from feeling the pain of what no doubt had to be a bruised rib, given how the palm that Naruto had hit him with had sent him flying back so far he'd struck a nearby house's wall.

Naruto blinked. "Oh, hell yeah!" he yelled, pumping his fist, "this lightning thing is awesome! I just need to learn how to make it do that when I tell it to instead of by accident!"

"Piece of advice: Next time aim a bit lower. If you hit my kidneys, I wouldn't be awake right now to beat the crap out of you for that," informed Jiraiya, standing up with an angry look on his face and cracking his knuckles.

Naruto began to cackle. "Come at me, bro!" yelled the annoying blond, turning tail and running for the hills.

"Why you..!"

* * *

Later still, at a very simply decorated hospital room that really has no issues earning a long and elaborate description, a young and attractive nurse, in a decidedly-too-skimpy uniform, was placing bandages around Jiraiya's chest. Jiraiya's entire torso looked not unlike that of a much younger man, his age only betrayed by the fact that many of his scars were faded to the point of being nearly impossible to notice unless you were looking very closely at the place they were. The nurse smiled and seemed to take great care in applying the bandages.

Blood dribbling from a busted lip and a small ball of rolled tissue paper stuck on his nose, Naruto was being cared for by another attractive nurse in skimpy clothing, though this one was wearing a much sterner expression. Still, she had cleaned up the cuts in Naruto's face quickly and taken a look at the bruises he'd picked up earlier that day during the class-wide scuffle.

"Okay, pro tip coming from a pro at this whole 'running away' business: Don't look back," informed Jiraiya, his tone amused.

"One would think that common sense…" the stern nurse commented, making a few finishing strokes to remove the blood on Naruto's face and noting that the wounds he picked up were closed and the bruises were small and faded enough that he shouldn't worry about waking up feeling stiff and with everything hurting. "Uzumaki-san, you should be thankful you only made your nose bleed. Impacting a wall, face first, as hard as you did tends to leave longer lasting marks."

The younger nurse giggled, and Jiraiya whispered something in her ear, to which she responded by swatting at one of his naked and muscular arms. Jiraiya guffawed loudly.

"If I didn't know that was probably a perverted joke, I would think that he's making fun of me," grumbled Naruto.

"He probably is," the sterner, older nurse said, sighing. "He can do both at once," she added when Naruto looked at her in a funny manner.

Once everything was done and Jiraiya was told to not do anything that would aggravate the state of his ribs, like chase a prospective genin through the roofs of Konoha and then give that genin an atomic wedgie, the two walked out of the hospital, clearly more relaxed and amused than annoyed by the visit. While Naruto didn't much care for the fact that both nurses had been quite attractive and rather fetching, he did appreciate the fact that they hadn't been bitches and the fact that he'd at least gotten a good laugh out of Jiraiya's hisses of pain whenever his rib was touched.

"Anyway, kid, I got myself some news for you that I was supposed to give before, well, you know what happened so no need to repeat it. Point is, the guy who was supposed to be your jounin sensei crapped out of the running because he's the laziest thing since the person who shortened the word 'lazy'…"

"Hey, I haven't even graduated yet!" said Naruto, looking perplexed at the thought of being assigned a teacher already.

"We make up teams and assign the genin to them before they pass for a very simple reason: You have to REALLY suck to fail the exams. Or have a specific debilitating condition, like yours. After wasting so much money on your training, do you really think the higher ups will let you get away without working to pay the village back?" explained Jiraiya, raising an eyebrow.

"I guess that makes sense," Naruto said, nodding to himself, "but isn't the academy supposed to be strictly voluntary?"

"In a way, it is. Did you ever wonder why nobody quit the academy after your second year there?" asked Jiraiya, "past that point, it's just not good business to let you get away. For the same reason it's just not good business to teach you the really important things until a few years in, when you're at least mature enough not to run around the village using the clone jutsu to prank people. Of course, there's the occasional dumbass who doesn't get it, but we're what keeps the village entertaining, aren't we?"

Naruto smiled widely at Jiraiya's speech, clearly amused by the description of themselves as honest to goodness dumbasses. He knew he wasn't very smart, and he didn't care. Better be dumb and happy than an eternally broody and moody genius like Sasuke. Or a genius that never finds anything entertaining or challenging, like Shikamaru. Clearly, being dumb had its perks. Also, he had to admit that it made sense not to teach ninja skills to someone who could betray you and use them against you.

"Anyway, point is that you're not gonna have to worry about doing the three jutsu. Your paperwork sucks, but so did mine and I'm the second most powerful man in Konoha right now. You're at the second spot when it comes to the practical scores, aren't you?"

"I'm at the top in chakra control, stamina and traps," said Naruto with a big smile, knowing that those where the only three scores he beat Sasuke in, coming behind him in everything else, and very far behind him in case of the paperwork.

"Well, the final test to become a prospective Genin is all practical. No paperwork required. You go in, kick some ass and come out with a shiny new headband," well, in Naruto's case he could just stand there and do nothing and he'd still receive a headband. But explaining that to him would require explaining to him why, and that was a conversation Jiraiya was planning to avoid until he had something, or someone, Naruto could unload pent up rage at nearby.

"Awesome!" cheered Naruto, pumping his fist and jumping in the air, showing a rather infectious joyous grin that Jiraiya found himself imitating in a few seconds. Clearly, the kid was just as charismatic as the prankster he remembered, even if he would never develop her… charms.

"Moving back to your status… since your teacher crapped out, I decided to make a whole mess of things to annoy everyone," he explained, giving Naruto a conspirational wink.

The blond nodded and grinned eagerly. "Sounds devious. Can I help?"

"Of course it does! I thought it up!" said Jiraiya with a similar grin to Naruto's, "anyway, here's the deal: I wanted to take you as an apprentice, get you out of this village to see the sights around the world and maybe get you to learn how to kick extreme amounts of ass while at it. Since that's a no go because my job is too important and you're still too green, I will be training you whenever I have downtime between my missions,"

"Why would I wanna be trained by a pervert like you?" Naruto asked, raising an eyebrow, "I mean, those civilian girls at the bathhouse beat you up real good."

"Kid. They were wearing towels. To stomp on me they had to raise their legs. If you get where I'm heading to, stop me, but I let them beat me up so I could stare unabashedly at their pus-"

Naruto just punched him in the face, the blond's own face glowing red in both embarrassment and anger. "Dammit you're even more perverted than I thought you were! Don't you feel sorry for yourself!?"

"I'm goddamn Jiraiya of the goddamn Sannin, kid!" countered Jiraiya, glaring at him, "they knew exactly what they were doing as did I. According to Konoha law, I had to ask for their permission to use their likeness in my books. Beating me up when I 'accidentally'" and there he paused to make air quotes, "reveal myself is a tradition in Konoha's bathhouses."

"So everyone in Konoha is a pervert?" asked Naruto, somewhat confused on why anyone would willingly show their most private part to a lecherous old fool.

"Yes. Some just hide it better than others, and some don't even try," said Jiraiya, smiling at him like a proud father educating his son, "anyway, you'll join and train with other teams when I'm not around. Make sure you learn all you can from them so we can skip to the good stuff when I'm around. I can't teach you Raiton, and that's the lightning chakra techniques, but I can teach you how to actually fight, sealing and a whole host of stuff that's invaluable for your every day perversion."

Naruto sighed. "You damn well better really be that busy, old man, 'cause if I find out you're just lazy… Anyway… I need a name for the lightning palm thing."

"You need to think up a way of using it on the fly, though. That looks like a nasty shock in melee, but if you have to sit on your ass to prepare it like you did against me, it wouldn't be that useful," mused Jiraiya.

"I don't really need to concentrate to do it," said Naruto, linking his arms behind his neck and giving an exaggerated shrug, "or I won't once I train it! I'll see if I can do it with both arms."

Jiraiya nodded with a grin. "See if you can make lightning run on both of your hands at once."

Naruto raised an eyebrow and looked somewhat distracted at this. "Why?"

"Because it would look really cool!" explained the old man as if he were telling a particularly dumb child how to breathe.

Naruto thought about it for a few fractions of a second before he nodded. "Yeah, that would look pretty freaking cool, wouldn't it?" he admitted, imagining it to himself. And so, as Jiraiya dropped Naruto off at his apartment (after pointing out that he'd see him off to the academy the next morning but would not return until Naruto's graduation, most likely) and then going after a pair of whores that were willing to share a client for a bit extra.

Almost immediately, Naruto commenced his training to be able to use his freaky strong lightning affinity to look much, much cooler than any other human had the right to.


	4. I'm Famous!

**I'm Famous!**

"Let me put it this way... I challenge you to beat Sasuke's anger issues out of him! If you succeed, Kakashi will wear a green bodysuit for... a week. If you don't, you'll have to wear a standard jounin uniform for the same time!" Sarutobi Hiruzen said, pointing at Gai. He was clearly passionate and feeling strongly about his words, telling Gai that this was no joke. "I'm just relaying that for Kakashi," he added, returning to his standard demeanor.

"I see, Hokage-sama! It is a clear challenge from my Eternal Rival, and as such, I will not let him defeat me like this! Yosh, I am Maito Gai, and I will turn Sasuke-kun into a boy in the springtime of his Youth or else I shall wear a standard uniform for a week! And if I can't do that, I will wear a standard uniform lined with weights for a month! And if-" the Jounin continued out crying rather passionately about how he was gonna succeed at this challenge, but Sarutobi dismissed him.

On one corner of the office, an ANBU giggled. On another, the sound of a turning page was heard. At those times, Sarutobi wished his ANBU weren't so horribly blasé about his own health. He might be the most badass man in Konoha, but even he gets distracted sometimes, dammit.

"At least don't steal my Icha Icha!" He growled at the ANBU that was concealed behind nothing much. Oh, how he wanted, desperately, to punch that fucker in the nose.

* * *

Sasuke shivered. "I kept having nightmares about youth..." he mumbled to himself, mostly.

Naruto scoffed. "You think that's bad? I keep having dreams about this really old guy that calls himself a super pervert," he said, rolling his eyes, "trust me, dreaming of yourself as a toddler really ain't as bad as my standard dreams."

"That's... not the problem. Green. Spandex and green. That's all I can think about," he said, shivering.

Meanwhile, Iruka shared Sasuke's fear. "That would probably be Maito Gai," said the chunin, "who, coincidentally, is to be your Jounin-sensei. But that will wait until later. First, Team One..."

As Iruka began to drone out the names of the teams, Sasuke found himself dreading his future. If his dreams were to be trusted, it would not be pretty in the least. But then, he steeled himself. He was an avenger and he was the best there was at enduring the crap life threw at him. He would NOT allow something as simple as nerves over getting an... eccentric... teacher getting in his way. Besides, all that he knew about the jounin was what everybody knew about him. That he was a training nut and wore green spandex. And that's because the man hadn't had a problem with introducing himself to Sasuke and explaining that he'd be taking Sasuke on as an apprentice on top of the already existing team he had.

At least the man seemed to take training seriously. That would only be a good thing for Sasuke.

Naruto, meanwhile, knew that he wouldn't get an actual team. His situation was maybe the biggest mess in the history of Konoha, but then again, after his conversation with Sasuke was over, he had turned his thoughts to elemental manipulation. Specifically, how to manage to manipulate lightning quickly.

Doing it was relatively easy, all he had to do was focus on his chakra rubbing against itself and it would generate the necessary electrical charge. And he had gotten it, in just a few days, to the point that he could generate small currents of electricity with the ease of a thought. Problem was, he didn't particularly know how to handle making it into an attack.

He'd experimented with electrifying his physical attacks, but it'd proven harder than he'd first thought. His sole attacking jutsu, if it could be even called that, was a far cry from being ready to see combat usage. The raisho, or lightning palm, had proven effective when Naruto got enough time to focus on it and charge it up. He'd actually found out that he could pierce through the earthen walls Ebisu could bring up with ease using the lightning palm. So much so that he could casually bitchslap them and they'd crumble into dust.

He had worked on maintaining his charge on his palms instead of having it dissipate when he struck something. This, he trained by blocking mud bullets. Since trying to command two palms' worth of lightning hadn't been particularly easy (he could only get nearly unnoticeable bolts of lightning to form between his hands, and only if he was running his chakra through the space in between them), he'd stuck to one while trying this exercise.

Even if he could slap aside or outright cancel out the attacks, he could only do so once or twice before he lost control or concentration, and he'd then be forced to eat mud. The old pervert had only dropped by once since the last time Naruto had seen him, and the visit had been short enough that nothing had been accomplished, except give him some encouragement.

"Naruto! Naruto! I'm calling out your name! Don't make me start to list off whose panties you've stolen!" yelled a rather familiar voice.

"I swear it was an accident! I confused Sakura's mom's laundry bag with my groceries!" there was an indignant shout somewhere in the back of Naruto's mind, but he didn't really care. "Besides, she didn't mind it. Also... Huh? Why do I suddenly hear old perverts in my head?" asked Naruto, coming out of the trance that thoughts of mud fights with Ebisu brought to his mind. He wanted to stuff a mud bullet down the annoying man's throat so bad..!

"Because you're probably insane," said the same voice, "besides, you could be having hallucinations of worse things." Naruto vaguely heard the giggles across the room then. "Like Sarutobi-sensei in a bikini," the voice continued without a care in the world.

All giggles stopped. There was a long and collective "EWWWWW" that coursed through the room.

But Naruto himself brought a finger to his lips. "I could raise you higher, but I won't because Iruka-sensei and Mizuki-sensei would hate me if I did, and that would be bad," Naruto reasoned, nodding to himself. "Oh, hey, you're not a hallucination!" Naruto realized, blinking up at Jiraiya, who stared down with an amused expression in his face.

"Of course I'm not! I got a week of off time just for you, brat, and we're gonna make the most of it! And by that, I mean we're going to do all sorts of stupid and illegal things that would normally get you arrested, but you can get away with it because I'm goddamn Jiraiya of the Sannin!" cried the white haired man, grabbing Naruto by the back of his jacket and throwing him through a window. It was, thankfully, open. "Vamonos!" he yelled, as he followed the orange projectile.

"I... I can't decide whether I should be envious of Naruto for training with one of the Sannin, or if I should be feeling pity on him," a young boy carrying a dog and wearing a hoody that hid most of his hair from view, asked, then he turned to another boy, this one wearing a trenchcoat that couldn't possibly be comfortable on the rather hot land of fire. "You're smart and my teammate, right? Shino, tell me how to feel, please."

"I am... stumped myself. Shikamaru?" asked Shino, turning to the boy that was at the last row.

"We will need a new word for this," Shikamaru confirmed. "For now, let's just pray for Konoha's safety..." he said, and then he turned to see a blonde girl berate a boy who seemed to be wearing a pair of panties on his head with a metallic plate attached to it. "Troublesome," he muttered to himself.

"I'm in despair! The lack of Sasuke-kun on my team has left me in despair!" cried a pinkette girl, almost weeping, but failing to do so. Sasuke studiously and furiously ignored everything around himself and tried to find a bright light in the darkness of his future...

* * *

"First Lesson: The stuff I do is actually training in disguise," began Jiraiya, grabbing Naruto just before he struck the tree Jiraiya had aimed at. "I'm slipping, though, I'd aimed a few centimeters higher," he admitted, and only then did Naruto see the x that was a few centimeters above where Naruto's forehead would've struck.

"That's... actually kinda cool," admitted Naruto, "but I will still punch you in the nuts for it. Just sayin'," he said, conversationally.

"That's good initiative," Jiraiya said, nodding in approval. "Anyway, point here is, if you wanna be as tough as me, you need to learn how to stop doing stupid shit by first recognizing what the stupid shit is. Beginning with, of course, everything that you should not do when you're trying to sneak up on someone. To this end, I will begin taking you on my standard perversion tour around Konoha. Don't worry, the ladies understand, I've already explained this," explained the white haired man.

"That's still perversion, though," Naruto said, rolling his eyes. "I'm not a pervert, you know?"

"Bah," Jiraiya dismissed Naruto's claims with a hand wave before continuing, "don't think of it as you being a pervert on the girls. Think about it as the girls rewarding you for doing well by showing you things that you wouldn't be able normally. Trust me, the real thing is ALWAYS better than porn," Jiraiya said, nodding sagely.

"You go to great lengths to justify being a pervert," Naruto deadpanned.

"Only because it's fun," confessed the toad sage shamelessly, "anyway, being in actual, if not mortal, danger is the best way to train. After all, the more you get your ass kicked in training, the less it will be kicked in actual combat!"

The chakra-impaired boy looked ready to make good on his promise to punch Jiraiya in the nuts. His right hand started crackling with electricity. Naruto formed a fist and it began crackling more violently, and then he once again opened it.

"You've reduced the time that takes! Good!" Jiraiya said, nodding at Naruto. "For now, we'll focus on your physical fitness and all that jazz. I don't know the first thing about Raiton and Kakashi's on a mission right now. Anyway, this is actually a genjutsu and I'm really holding you just above the womens' side in my favorite onsen, hidden under another genjutsu. Take a deep breath," he cautioned.

Knowing the old man wasn't above making this a trick, Naruto nonetheless took a deep breath and held it... and suddenly, he felt the world around him break apart as he was sunk into hot water... and then suddenly, there were high pitched screams all around. Naruto looked around, confused, when he could pull his head out of the water. Several women, clad in nothing but their birthday suits, were screeching as they tried to cover themselves, while others were advancing on him.

In a very tiny and concerned vocice, Naruto tried to beg for forgiveness, tried to explain how it wasn't his fault and he'd been tricked into it...

… But it became difficult after the first slap, and thus he had to begin running. Fortunately for him, there were only two genin kunoichi that could chase him amongst the group, and they were reluctant to chase him very far from the Onsen.

Meanwhile, Jiraiya giggled from his hidden spot, still standing on the water itself, a genjutsu disrupting his image from the women's perception. "You've got much to learn still, Naruto, but you've got quick feet on you, I'll give you that much," he said, grinning widely. Looking at the images of feminine beauty -oh, how he loved Konoha and her girls!- all around him, he pulled out his notebook and started taking notes.

Unfortunately for him, in all the excitement of his notes, he forgot about the transparency genjutsu...

But that is a tale for another day.

* * *

"Next, we must build up your pain tolerance!" Jiraiya said, smirking despite the bruises that hadn't faded from the day before. "So I'm gonna beat the crap out of you until you can only crawl on your chin, and then I'll get Otoha, this very beautiful specimen of the 'Nurse' occupation assigned to us for the day, to heal you, at which point I will beat the crap out of you again. Say hello to Otoha-chan, Naruto," instructed Jiraiya, gesturing towards the nurse in the impossibly skimpy nurse uniform. The fact that Jiraiya liked authenticity was the only voucher of the legitimacy of Otoha's credentials.

Naruto didn't care. He just groaned. "Hello, Otoha-chan," he said, bowing to her as he'd been instructed to do when he wanted people to like him.

"Good," the white haired man said, nodding in approval, "while she works on healing you, I will be working with you on what to do and what not to do when you are on the most sacred of pursuits!" Jiraiya cried passionately.

"Food?" Naruto asked, hopeful.

"No, boy! The most important and sacred of pursuits is the one that everyone has the most impressive urge of! Getting laid! A lot! With a lot of different partners! And in a lot of different ways! You might be too young to get laid now, but by the time you're legal, I'll have taught you all of my tricks and tips to deal with the fairest of genders!" he said, gesturing towards Otoha, who just giggled bashfully at being described as such.

"I will be helping with that, too, Naruto-kun," she informed him, throwing a wink his way. "And not only because it's a favour to Jiraiya-sama, if you know what I mean," she said, smirking widely as she looked him up and down. "Cute as you are, I'll bet that you'll turn into a right heartbreaker with a little time and proper grooming."

Naruto blushed intensely at her words, almost taking a step back. He hadn't ever gotten that kind of praise before. Sure, some people had called him cute before recognizing him as 'That Kid', but it was still nice to know a grown, and very hot, woman thought that he would be a very fetching lad with a little time.

"Do I get to defend myself during this?" Naruto asked, defeated.

"That's the beauty of this training: It will also serve as Taijutsu training! In fact, this here will be your very first lesson in real life Taijutsu!" yelled the extravagant Super Pervert... before he suddenly disappeared and reappeared behind Naruto. "DODGE!" he yelled, and he brought his fist down, sending Naruto crashing face first to the floor.

Naruto groaned in discontent and discomfort, and raised a single hand with the universal 'fuck you' middle finger raised.

"We'll also need to work on your following orders. Okay, then, here's lesson two... DODGE!"

* * *

Three days later, Naruto still wasn't certain the sky wasn't purple and that he hadn't always had his nose crooked that way. Fortunately for him, he healed, and he healed fast. Unfortunately for him, Jiraiya had made use of that fact to drive Naruto to the point that a medic aiding his regeneration wasn't enough to keep up. This ended up with Naruto having to use crutches outside of training, what with his legs' consistency being comparable to Jello and all.

And then he met up with Sasuke. Who was covered in bruises. They both sent each other a pleased little smirk, thinking, in their heads, that at least they weren't as bad as the other.

Later, Naruto went for Ramen, chatted with the Ramen Stall Guy, also known as Ichiraku Teuchi, and the Ramen Stall Guy's Hot Daughter, also known as Ichiraku Ayame, paid them with Jiraiya's money (Jiraiya was actually quite careless with his wallet and Otoha felt that Naruto should have at least a little reward for not crying like a bitch when the alcohol hit the wounds... and to shut him up about just how incredibly illegal her stealing from the hospital's supplies was..).

Then Jiraiya showed up and sat down for one or two bowls of ramen. And to flirt with Ayame.

"You know, I would do the whole 'threatening father' thing," he said, gesturing towards Naruto and Jiraiya, speaking to Ayame as Jiraiya berated Naruto for putting his underwear on backwards, "but they happen to be ninja, and they could probably snap me like a twig," he admitted, frowning.

"Yeah, well, this IS a hidden village. Bad business to pick a fight with a shinobi in one of these, I hear," Ayame retorted, smiling, "besides, Jiraiya-sama is too old for me and I have a feeling that whoever wants to get a piece of Naruto-kun will have a very hard time getting him to notice them." Not that she minded. Not truly. Not really. Naruto was delightfully hilarious to tease the way he was, given that anything approaching subtlety flew all the way over his head. You had to be extremely blunt to get through him.

"No, dammit, I don't care if it helps with calligraphy and sealing, I will not write your porn for you!"

Ayame sighed. Jiraiya was nearly in tears at being denied the editor he desired so much. It didn't help that she knew Jiraiya needed a decent editor badly. "Maybe you should give it a try, Naruto-kun? I'll give you a bowl of free ramen," she offered, wagging her eyebrows.

Jiraiya nearly jumped in joy when Naruto accepted in a heartbeat. "Finally!" Jiraiya yelled. "Someone who won't get distracted every five seconds!"

Naruto cursed the powers of Ramen, that night, because Jiraiya's writing wasn't so much 'chicken scratch filled with all sorts of error' as it was 'WHAT THE HELL AM I READING' levels of bad...

Oh well, lemons to lemonade. At least he could pretend that the smutty parts were actually battles and the people in them were actually grappling. Yeah, that would do well enough...

* * *

The sixth day in Naruto's marathon week was perhaps the worst yet. No, it was definitely the worst yet. Not because Jiraiya had forced him to climb the Hokage Monument with only his hands, no chakra and wearing a weighted metallic frame that prevented him from moving his legs under his pants, no, it was because Jiraiya was on a visible river nearby, displaying the physique born from years and years of hard training, as he sat sunbathing and watching the incredibly pretty girls that had chosen to bathe there.

The metal frame was incredibly annoying, and Naruto was starting to want to beat the crap out of Jiraiya with it. The smooth stone of the monument had been carved that way explicitly so it'd be incredibly hard to climb up. In the spirit of fairness, Naruto had been allowed to use lightning chakra to cut through the rock with his fingers and get something he could actually hold onto. Otherwise, it would have been completely impossible to climb it without chakra.

When he'd made it to the top, the Jiraiya clone assigned to him... punched him atop his head. "You should've used the stairs and just walked on your hands. Would've been far easier, you idiot! Don't just follow the spirit of my words, all you have to restrain yourself to is the letter of them! You're a ninja, you're supposed to cheat the rules all the time! That's why we actually make it a point to be as specific as possible when we give out these kinds of tasks and we expect them done a certain way!" Jiraiya yelled, pulling Naruto up, then he sighed. "Well, it's still good exercise, even though you're probably not gonna be able to use your crutches today..."

"On the flipside, at least now I know my arms get tired a lot slower than my legs," admitted Naruto, smiling in a way that only a well and truly exhausted person can smile.

"I was gonna have you train a bit more in lightning jutsu up here, sitting on a Hokage's head. Should get you away from any outside influences to disrupt your concentration while you experiment, and if you blow yourself up, nobody will be hurt," explained Jiraiya, sounding somewhat annoyed.

"I've still got energy to try some lightning manipulation," Naruto said, shrugging. "By the way, last night I figured out how to make lightning appear on both hands, watch!" he suddenly derailed the conversation, bringing his palms together and then expanding them slowly, a single, thicker than usual lightning bolt dancing in between his hands. He slowly pulled them apart, stretching the bolt and making it thinner and thinner. It crackled erratically, almost groaning, and it only stopped when it formed an arc in front of Naruto's chest, while Naruto himself held his hands as far appart as they could be.

"Nice," Jiraiya said, rubbing his chin. "Can you hit stuff with it?" he asked, seeing as the lightning tried to make jerky movements to ground itself, yet failing due to the chakra keeping it in place, even if it couldn't prevent it from making the jerky, incredibly fast movements lightning was known for.

"I haven't tried. Would've destroyed my own apartment," Naruto said, dryly. "But I don't think I can use it like that yet. I got thinking that I can use this to make it into a whip or something. But when I try to make it take solid shape, it just goes out of control and fizzles," and he hadn't even know what the word 'fizzle' meant until he'd looked it up in the dictionary, "so I'm kind of stumped. Most of what I can do just takes too long for it to be effective in battle..."

"Of course it would. This is all incredibly high level stuff, Naruto, that you can only do because of your freakishly strong affinity for lightning," Jiraiya remined Naruto, sitting down next to him, at a safe enough distance that the small bolts of electricity that arced from Naruto's hands weren't in danger of dispelling the clone. "This isn't you learning some random lightning ninjutsu. This is you making things up as you go along. I'd have you wait until Kakashi could teach you some more about Raiton, but you're probably onto something here," continued the perverted clone, seemingly thoughtful.

"Since I don't use a lot of chakra in these sessions, I usually do a lot of lightning manipulation while at home and bored," he said, nonchalantly, "and I've been working on the speed I can make the lightning actually useful in. The palm thing is coming along nicely. Ebisu said that it's probably just practice for me to be able to form it more quickly... I can use it for a lot of things once it's charged, though. Even if it's only a useful attack if I discharge it when it hits, it can cut through rock really easily for some reason," he said, scratching his neck. "I don't think that should work, but it somehow does, and I don't know why."

Jiraiya himself shrugged, continuing to watch as Naruto strained to hold a conversation and the long lightning bolt that connected his hands in place. "It's simple. Just because we call it 'lightning chakra' doesn't mean it is actual lightning. It behaves in a similar way, and has similar properties, but ultimately it comes down to the chakra affecting it in certain ways. Frankly, it's just easier not to question these things and just accept them for what they are: things we can't explain. We let the research and development division figure those things out, usually," he said with a grin on his face.

Naruto huffed as the lightning vanished and his arms dropped, limp, to his sides. "You know, I've been trying to force my chakra to take shape outside my body, but nothing I've tried has worked so far... I think that if I can make my chakra take a certain shape, I could probably control the shape the lightning takes," he said, rubbing his chin in a manner reminiscent of how Jiraiya had done it before.

"It's probably a good start if nothing else. You're familiar with the water-walking exercise, aren't you? Well, the principle is pretty much the same. Push chakra outside but have it remain connected to your body. For instance, this," and then he paused to raise his hand, putting it in front of Naruto's face, waiting for a few seconds until suddenly, a whirling ball of screeching chakra formed, sitting snugly in the palm of Jiraiya's hand, "is the jutsu known as Rasengan. Pure chakra manipulation, and as such, completely impossible for you," he said, frowning slightly for a few seconds. "Point is, the principle behind is very simple: when I form the sphere, you can see that it's still connected to my hand, and only when it is properly complete does it raise above it," said Jiraiya, sagely advice being dispensed in a sagely tone.

"How do you get it to keep its shape after you let it go, though?" Naruto asked, watching the whirling blue sphere with awe and admiration. It did look pretty, even if it was a bit noisy. Nowhere near as noisy as Naruto when he was trying to electrify his arms.

"It maintains its own shape. It spins so fast around its core that it actually holds itself together and becomes self sufficient. It has to do with a whole bunch of laws regarding how Chakra behaves in a vacuum and when suction is applied upon an artificial gravitational pull, and a whole lot of things I have absolutely no idea how to explain to you. It was created by my student, Minato, and it took me three months to learn it. Trust me, it's pretty complicated," spoke the sage, waving his hand indulgently as if to say 'I'll explain to you when you are actually capable of understanding the explanation', before returning to the topic at hand, "I don't know how it'd work with other shapes, but try making spheres first."

"Any tips on that?" asked Naruto, hopefully.

"Yeah... Chakra tends to be drawn to itself. The Rasengan is composed of a few rings of chakra spinning in different directions, all anchored to a central sphere of very tightly compressed chakra. That pulls the rings of chakra together and keeps them in place, while in turn the rings themselves keep the sphere from dissipating. You could create your own version of the Rasengan, if you apply that concept to lightning chakra. Just... bear in mind that it will very likely go boom, so be careful."

Naruto sighed and rolled his eyes.

"I mean it, Naruto. If it looks unstable, cancel it immediately. I got more chakra burns on my hand than I can count from attempting the Rasengan, and I almost lost my right hand any number of times when I fucked up. I'm forbidding you from trying to work on trying to recreate the Rasengan with lightning unless you're under mine or Kakashi's supervision, understood?" ordered the perverted sage, sounding serious and responsible for once, which was actually throwing Naruto for a loop.

"Sure, I guess. I don't see what the big deal of a few burns would be. I'm pretty sure shocking myself won't be a problem," he admitted, grinning widely.

"Playing with lightning as often as you do seems to desensitize a guy," Jiraiya said, grunting in annoyance, "but you can still cause untold amounts of damage and havoc if you screw that up, and I'm not talking the good, funny kind here!"

"Depends on funny for who we're talking about here," Naruto replied with a cheeky grin.

"Stop being such a cheeky brat. Just for that, you'll be walking on your hands all the way down the steps, you cheeky brat!"

"You suck, pervy sage!" Naruto whined.

"Never, brat! I do know a lot of people who do, though," replied cheekily Jiraiya.

Naruto raised one hand and snapped his fingers. Lightning cracked. "One day, I'll figure out how to throw lightning, and when I do, I'm gonna shove a bolt up your ass!" Naruto declared, pointing at Jiraiya.

"First you've gotta become badass enough to throw lightning bolts with your hands, brat," said the man of the duo, rolling his eyes. "Just get back on track already!"

* * *

Turns out Kakashi had enough free time to drop by the very moment Jiraiya left, though he himself had an A rank scheduled for two days after Naruto's physical conditioning with Jiraiya was over. Naruto found himself cursing his fast regeneration since it made sure that he wouldn't be given a day's rest, seeing as his muscles didn't actually build up a strain that would make stopping to rest necessary.

"Raiton is... a bitch to manipulate. Trust me, I can use all elements to a certain extent and I can tell you that it's easier to get the other elements to do your bidding. Only fire is similarly hard to manipulate, and even that is easier once you get a flame going. Now, you seem to have the hardest part, generating the actual lightning, down pat, so we'll move on to direct manipulation. I could teach you jutsu, but that would take time I don't have and effort I'm not willing to put into teaching, so I'll fix your mistakes on Raiton and then we'll move on," said Kakashi in the wordiest he'd ever been. It was clear that he was on Briefing Mode, as it was as close to Teacher Mode as Kakashi could manage, and even then he sounded lazy with the drawl he used. Clearly, Kakashi was a master at irritating people.

"How do I shoot lightning?" asked Naruto, raising an eyebrow.

"That's easy. You don't. Lightning doesn't work that way. While you can control it when it's close to your body by affecting it with chakra, it's impossible to control past a certain distance," explained Kakashi, smiling. "The difficult part is figuring out how to control your chakra so that the lightning follows."

"You lost me," Naruto admitted, grinning like a moron and scratching the back of his neck in a carefree gesture.

Kakashi sighed in annoyance. "You need to control your chakra, not try to control the lightning through the chakra, and get the lightning to follow you along. For example, the lightning palm thing takes as long as it does because you're forming the lightning instead of letting the lightning form on its own around your chakra. Your Raiton affinity, from what I've seen, is just so ludicrous that you shouldn't even have to put in any effort at this," explained the jounin.

"But it doesn't work like that! If I just gather chakra somewhere without telling it what to do, it just disperses!" said the blond, pouting at Kakashi.

The silver haired jounin raised one of his eyebrows... the only one visible. Then he put a hand on his headband and lifted it, revealing a strange red eye with three tomoe around the pupil. Naruto recognized it as the Sharingan, since even though he hadn't been paying attention when the academy gave the lecture, he'd pissed off enough Uchiha over the ages to have seen it plenty.

"Do it," ordered the silver haired man.

Naruto sighed and gathered his chakra on his hand. Without telling it to stay in his hand and rub against itself to generate a charge, it dispelled as soon as it gathered, leaving Naruto with the vague awareness that his chakra had coursed the tips of his fingers.

Kakashi seemed enthralled by what he observed. "Do it again," he commanded.

And so Naruto did. Thrice more, Kakashi ordered him to repeat it, until Naruto just snapped and told him to get on with it.

"Well, Naruto, I can tell you that we were wrong about your affinity. It's not as big as we thought it was," said Kakashi, nodding to himself and getting Naruto to look at him weirdly as he did.

"Does that mean I can do other jutsu besides lightning?" asked the young boy, hope evident in his tone and face, which gave Kakashi a great thrill. He loved crushing young genin hopefuls' wills.

"Nope. It's even bigger than we thought it was. Naruto, you're making your chakra vibrate before you try to use it for anything, right?" asked Kakashi.

"Yeah, that's worked to make lightning so far," spoke Naruto, sounding suspicious. "What about it?"

"Stop doing it. Try making your chakra travel from the palm of one of your hands to the other one," spoke Kakashi, looking at Naruto's hands.

Shrugging, the genin put his palms facing each other and ran his chakra in between the gap. It zipped by as a bluish, slow bolt of lightning that crackled lazily across the air. "Holy crap it worked!" Naruto yelled, surprised.

"Of course it did. Now make it move faster," said Kakashi.

It took several attempts until Naruto was able to speed it up on a noticeable level. Even then, the speed was relatively slow. "You need to practice that. Try aiming at me now," Kakashi said, his voice dripping with barely hidden glee.

The blond boy merely shrugged. "Okay, here I go..." muttered Naruto, pointing a finger at Kakashi and willing his chakra out as hard as he could. A thin bolt of lightning zipped the distance between Naruto and Kakashi in a milisecond, striking Kakashi in the stomach and getting a very unenthusiastic 'Ow' out of the jounin.

"Well, I think it's slow when you're doing it between your hands because you have so much of it that it... well I won't bother explaining how chakra pressure works since you wouldn't get it anyway," Kakashi said, shrugging. "I had to spend months training myself before I could manipulate lightning half as well as you can naturally. All that's left is simply a lot of practice to get the power behind it to increase. Try concentrating your chakra on a shape now," spoke Kakashi, arms crossed.

Remembering the Rasengan, Naruto frowned. He hadn't made the slightest breakthrough with it because the ball of lightning he formed would explode very quickly. It didn't harm him, but it had burned off the front of his jacket and his right sleeve. As well as his eyebrows and part of his hair, but those had grown back in as short a time as it took for most of his wounds to heal.

He'd thought that it was still useful as a surprise attack, not to be used if he was carrying anything important on his person.

Now, however, Kakashi had just reduced the power behind his lightning immensely, but also increased his ability to control it. Deciding to start with something relatively simple, Naruto formed an axe. And by that, I mean he forced his chakra into the form of an oversized broad axe. He only managed to make the edge appear, but that's what he'd been putting most of his effort into anyway. He didn't need a handle to move it, as it was still his chakra and he could still control it by the stream that was connected to his body.

Kakashi nodded appreciatively, and the slip of focus Naruto took to notice that much caused the axe to fizzle into nothingness. Naruto felt slightly drained now, and he realized that the axe thing was ridiculously chakra intensive, if also ridiculously cool. Definitely a big time move, then.

Kakashi rubbed his chin and looked around. The flattened grass below him gave him an idea, and he began blazing through handseals, spurred on by his Sharingan's perfect recall of the necessary movements. "Naruto, jump back," Kakashi commanded somewhat urgently.

The blond complied, and as soon as he did, Kakashi slammed his hand against the ground, ending the string of handseals and allowing a large spike of raised stone spear through the ground, leaving a large stalagmite where Naruto had been standing.

"What the fuck!? That could have killed me!" screamed Naruto, somewhat frightened by the huge spike.

"Maa, I gave you plenty of forewarning, didn't I?" said the silver haired jounin, giving Naruto a two-eyed eye-smile before covering his Sharingan. "Don't tell anyone, but the Sharingan's copying ability is so perfect that I use the technique the exact same way it was used on me, which means I can't vary the power behind it or alter it in the least. I don't actually know that technique's name or how to actually use it, but my Sharingan does, and so I can use it," said Kakashi, rubbing the leaf symbol on his eyepatch forehead protector. "I actually needed to use the technique on a target because that's how it was used on me."

Naruto glared at him. "I don't buy it," he said. "Besides, doesn't that mean you could copy anything I do with my chakra?"

"In theory? Yes. In practice? Eh, that's a lot harder than it sounds. Everyone's chakra is a little different, and yours is very much so, which means copying chakra behavior is nigh-impossible. The handseals manipulate chakra in a very specific way that happens exactly the same way no matter who does it. A Sharingan can copy techniques without handseals, but without the training to make your chakra behave in the specific way necessary for that technique to work, it's not going to work. But we're on a tangent here, and we need to get back to your training," finished Kakashi, clearly smiling under his mask.

"You could've just said 'No I can't", and I would've been happy," Naruto said, looking cross eyed at the complex explanation.

"I forget I'm dealing with a moron here. Why did I agree to help you again?" asked Kakashi, raising an eyebrow.

"Because you want 'Trained the Hokage' on your curriculum?" asked Naruto, cheekily.

"Nah. I think it was because I'm gonna have a lot of fun watching you make everyone's life hell by breaking the laws of physics," said Kakashi, with an eye smile on his face.

Naruto laughed, even though he didn't understand the joke.

And he didn't up until Kakashi made him demonstrate his abilites for the Research and development division. Of course, that same day, Naruto learned that he was actually famous amongst them as an anomaly, and he even had several supporters on his bid for the Hokage's hat in between them. All in all, Naruto ended his session with Kakashi being genuinelly happy about his lot in life for the first time. Though he could've done without all the annoying people fawning over his cuteness as he demolished their precepts...


End file.
